Manipulating Alexa

I’ve noticed over the past couple of weeks a lot of websites are suddenly sporting little badges boldly displaying their Alexa rank with pride. This coincides “nicely” with the increase of PPP bloggers and other sponsoring programs because some of these services use Alexa as a measurement of how good your blog is and how much you should get paid.

Personally I think it’s utter crap, and anyone who’s anyone on the Internet knows that Alexa means nothing because it is incredibly easy to manipulate your rank. So, that’s exactly what this entry signifies: the start of a little experiment which will show you guys how easy it is to make your blog seem more popular (if you’re into that sort of thing).

First, make sure you’re running an Alexa-based toolbar (I believe you can download the official one for IE from Alexa.com, or there’s SearchStatus for Firefox). Next, browse your own website. Yes, it’s that simple. Were you expecting more to it? Of course, you can browse your friend’s sites too — nothing like a bit of mutual love for one another. (Interestingly enough SearchStatus even has an “exclusion list” so you can go nosing through anyone’s site you don’t like without benefiting them in the slightest. Eeevil!)

Try it! Leave a comment with your current Alexa rank here and then when I blog about this again in a week or so I’ll go and collect up everyone’s Alexa rankings for comparison. Of course, you then have to live with the knowledge that your rank is fake, but who cares… right?

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Comments

Sounds interesting but I don’t use Firefox or Internet Explorer. Good luck in the experiment though, it will be interesting to see what the results come out as. To be honest, I haven’t ever heard of Alexa.com until now. Oh well, not like I was missing anything.

My current Alexa rank is apparently 1,117,130 (i.e., crap). I’m not about to go joining any pay-me-to-sit-on-my-arse sites so I really couldn’t give a crap what that or my Google Pagerank is. …well ok, the PR is of *slight* importance, but for ego purposes only :P

Current Alexa rank: 669, 142. This is interesting, because not long ago (before I installed the search status plugin), I wasn’t even ranked. Looks like your little experiment has already shown results for me.

Oh, there’s no doubt in my mind how easy it is to get your ranking to lower for anything really (especially Alexa and Technorati.) I’ve got the little plugin for Firefox, but I think I did it more so out of curiosity and in hopes to see it get lower and lower! I’m at 379,907 right now.

Like others, I hadn’t ever heard of Alexa before this. O.o I feel so… old and out of the loop. I didn’t even know this trend existed, nevermind got the chance to be like… Ohhh, kiddies, no no no. :( Now I’m sad.

As you have said, the Alexa rank is ridiculously easy to manipulate. In just under three months I went from 1.7 million to just shy of 70,000. That said, I and many others find it ridiculous that PPP and similar pay-to-blog sites use Alexa rank as one of the qualifiers for opportunities, since it is so easy to manipulate.

The saddest thing I’ve seen one of these days was a review on YS.nu The reviewer hmmed for a bit, then checked the site’s Alexa rank and satisfied gave the site a 4 star rating. Because a 4th ranking on Alexa … lyke… rly deserves a 4/5 .. duuuh! *sighs*

When I first started my site I used Alexa for a few weeks but luckily I came to my senses soon enough and didn’t bother with it anymore.. I actually haven’t looked at it since, I might just have a peak just for the sake of the experiment.

I don’t know if it’s safe to say that everyone who has a little Alexia thingie on their site is doing it for anything other than personal statistics. I’m sure there are plenty who are, but Jesus, there may be plenty who aren’t. I personally have one on my site, and I can’t forsee taking it down because a few people don’t like it, but my ranking’s what can easily be considered crap and, since I refuse toolbars because of the spyware involved in most ( and can’t use one with MSN Explorer anyway ), it doesn’t help my rank any. Not everyone’s out to screw all those ‘honest’ and ‘true’ webmasters out of whatever they’d get if someone didn’t have an Alexia deally. :P

You don’t really even need to browse your own site anymore than you normally would. I’ve had the Firefox plugin installed for a while and my Alexa score has improved a ton and the only time I really visit my sites is when I need to update them or respond to comments. It really is a useless statistic.